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Why I can’t trust Donald Trump

I knew it was time to chill out when I got into an argument at the TAB – the local betting agency – over Donald Trump.
All I said was I hope I have better luck with my bets on the races than my vote against Donald Trump. Out of the blue, a bloke I never met before said: “Give him time,” which prompted me to say Trump was the closest thing to Richard Nixon the US has ever had, and he will be impeached in a year or two. My new best enemy carried on, as did a TAB friend, who started to add his two cents. It was at this point, I said: “He’s a bully, a bullshit artist and a horrible human being.” I’ve said worse things about Richard Nixon. Then I left.
For those people who read my blog, you may have come across the post I wrote earlier this year where I said this about the President-Elect: “Donald Trump is likely to win the presidency on November 8 because not enough Americans will realise how awful he will be and vote for him. They voted for Richard Nixon who claimed he was not a crook. But he was a crook and a liar and he ruined a generation of Americans. He had to resign on August 9, 1974 because of the Watergate scandal, and it was one of the happiest days of my life … I think Donald Trump is likely to win because Americans are divided, angry, tired of politicians and political correctness, hypocrisy, broken promises, Wall Street and banks … I’m planning on going back later this year to the US for a university reunion, and I will be asking people if they’ll be voting for Trump. I think the majority will say yes. I hope I’m wrong.”
But no, I wasn’t wrong. I went back to the US to the 50th reunion of the Villanova University class of 1966, and this is what I found in my June post. After friends in northeastern Pennsylvania said they’d vote for Hillary Clinton, I asked at least two dozen alumni at Villanova who they’d vote for. Too many of them said, like Villanova nursing graduate, Lorraine Brewer: “Anybody but Hillary.” An old friend, Steve Freind, the president of the student body in 1966, and a former Republican representative for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, said yes immediately when I asked if he would vote for Trump. “Why?” I asked. He replied: “I’m not going to vote for that (a rude word describing Hillary).” The Chairman of the Class Committee, S. Curtis Seifert, said he’d vote for Trump: “I don’t like politicians and Donald Trump is not a politician.” Rich Galli, who’s an attorney in suburban Philadelphia, said: “I have to vote for Donald Trump. He’ll scare the foreign leaders and he’s not afraid to say what he thinks.” Joe McCauley, a retired bank vice-president, was standing next to his wife when I asked if he would vote for Trump: “My wife would kill me. I’m not going to vote, I think. I don’t think I’ll want to vote for Trump and I can’t vote for Hillary.” Another old friend, Tom Sproul, surprised me with his reply: “Who else am I going to vote for? I’m not going to vote for Hillary. She’s terrible on foreign policy.” An alumnus standing nearby chimed in: “I can’t stand listening to her.” Dave Banmiller, a former CEO of Pan Am and Jamaica Airlines, said he wanted to get Mitt Romney (more of him later) elected. I asked Dave again if he’d vote for Trump and he repeated he wished Romney would have run for president. He wouldn’t say for certain if he’d vote for him, but it seems likely: “I just wish Donald would tone it down a bit.”
These were white male and female, university graduates, and they were voting for Trump. After travelling around northeast Pennsylvania, I saw quite a few “Trump for President” lawn signs and a particularly nasty one: “Hillary for Prison 2016.” It was rust-belt country, where manufacturing jobs are disappearing, and an omen for the Clinton campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. I thought Trump could win, but I never thought he could triumph in my home state. I stayed with Jim and Roz Morgan in the lovely town of Lake Ariel, and we visited Roz’s relatives in Scranton and had drinks at an Irish bar that would have made Vice-President Joe Biden feel at home. Both he and Hillary Clinton’s father were born there, and Pat McMullen’s pub reminded me of the Irish bars in Philly. And this is where I found the secret vote … Americans who wouldn’t say they were voting for Trump, until after the election. They cropped up in a page one story in The Weekend Australian by Cameron Stewart. They were the “Forgotten People” of the United States. That’s what Donald Trump called them: “the forgotten men and women of America,” and there they were in Scranton. In Pat McMullen’s bar, no one said they were voting for Trump, but some Scranton residents told Cameron Stewart they would support him. Paul Bidwell, a 32-year-old handyman and security guard, who works three jobs to look after his wife and kids (Photo below: Paul Bidwell with his children Aires and Audrijanna in Scranton. The Australian, David Joshua Ford) said: “At least Donald Trump is a billionaire … he owns half of New York City so if he can bring that business model to the United States, we can start making money again.” A lifelong Democrat and council worker, Patrick McNicholls, said: “I am done with the Clintons, they are a dynasty and they have been there too long and they don’t care about the middle class. I like Trump’s message about undocumented aliens and I want America to be proud again. We are getting kicked around and we not respected any more.” That’s why the polls were wrong: the pundits didn’t talk to the Bidwells or the McNicholls or even look at the anti-Hillary signs on the lawns of Scranton and other rust-belt towns in Pennsylvania. According to the US Census, the white population was 84.1% in Scranton in 2010, and the number of people in poverty was 22 per cent.
I grew up in Philadelphia, about 160 kilometres southeast of Scranton, and it’s a Democratic town. Once an Irish and Italian stronghold, it’s now 43 per cent African American, 42 per cent Caucasian, 13 per cent Hispanic and 7 per cent. Many of those white residents have moved to the suburbs to get away from the minorities, allegedly ruining their neighbourhoods and bringing down house values. It was in the suburbs of Philadelphia and other US cities where the whites voted for Donald Trump, voicing the same kind of anger and disillusionment heard in Scranton. I heard it at my Villanova reunion, and I heard it in Pennsylvania, not as much in Washington, DC, which, of course, is a Democrat enclave under an Obama administration -– the beltway hated by Trump and his supporters.
I watched the election results on November 9 (8 in the US), a day that will live in infamy for the Democratic Party, but it started well for Hillary Clinton. Channel Nine’s political editor Laurie Oakes told presenter Karl Stefanovic about a prominent Republican Party operative who gave him the line: “Our only path to the White House now is if Bill and Hillary, when they move in, invite Mr and Mrs Trump in for lunch.” It looked good for Clinton and the Democrats until about 1.14pm Australian time when CNN’s John King, manning the electoral maps, commented: “Donald Trump voters are saying ‘We have a path (to the presidency)’. At 2.29, I switched to Sky News where an unhappy former Labor Party President and Federal MP, Stephen Loosley, said it was “Midnight in America,” what commentators had been saying about Trump’s gloomy convention speech. The Ohio-born, former NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally, added there’s “not a lot of good news,” agreeing with Loosley’s “Midnight in America” theme. Sky’s political editor, David Speers, said: “That’s where it’s at”: a huge voter block, angry, voting for change and wanting to “drain the swamp” in Washington … “Republicans are polishing off their victory speech.” At 3.21pm, Speers says: “It has happened, Donald Trump is on his way to becoming the next president of the United States.” At 4.26 pm, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said it was “a truly amazing story.” The first to call it — at 6pm (2am New York time)– was the ABC Australia’s Antony Green. John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, whose emails released by Wikileaks, hurt Clinton, came out to the 11th Avenue street party where her supporters gathered to celebrate her victory. There was no celebration. Podesta said Hillary would speak to them tomorrow but she did call Trump later to concede. Donald Trump then appeared on stage to give his victory speech, congratulate Hillary Clinton for her concession and her hard-fought campaign and appeal to Americans “to bind the wounds of division.” Division he had created after a career of lies and 18 months of insults, misogyny, arrogance, ridiculous promises and unproven accusations of criminal action against Hillary Clinton. The next morning, she was gracious and told her supporters they must accept that “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.” The president-elect tried to use those words against her this week after she joined the Green Party candidate Jill Stein (ABC America photo below) in her vote recount in as many as three states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. If he had lost the election, he would have been the first to ask for a vote recount. But he told Associated Press that he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” without a shred of evidence.
In November 1972, Richard Nixon was re-elected president of the United States in a landslide, winning 49 states and nearly 61 per cent of the popular vote. His opponent, Senator George McGovern won only one State, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. In one of my favourite political biographies, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, author Rick Perlstein chronicles how Nixon only accepted four congratulatory phone calls and attacked McGovern for claiming the president would not end the war: “Wasn’t that fellow unbelievably irresponsible with his charges in the last two days?” Nixon then “congratulated himself for the unwarranted magnanimity of his victory speech: ‘You’ve got to be generous, don’t you think so?’” I’d like to think in a future biography of Donald Trump, someone will discover he said something similar to an aide after his victory speech, often described as magnanimous by his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, his incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and whichever one of his staff actually wrote the words.
The presidential election was all about trust: Many voters did not trust Hillary Clinton; but she did win the popular vote by nearly two million; therefore more people did not trust Donald Trump. I am one of them. The National Democratic Training Committee has asked Democrats to support an investigation into Donald Trump before he takes office. Why? They cite three reasons: Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women and multiple women have accused him of assault; he illegally donated $25,000 from the Trump Foundation to Florida Attorney-General Pam Bondi’s re-election campaign to avoid prosecution for Trump University’s fraud lawsuits in the state; and he has been involved in over 3500 lawsuits. Just last week, he paid off the victims of the Trump University lawsuit to avoid having to testify in court.
Mitt Romney, now being considered by Donald Trump as a possible Secretary of State, has described the president-elect as a “con man,” a “phony” and a “fraud.” In a speech in March this year, Romney said: “Look, his bankruptcies have crushed small businesses and the men and women who work for them. He inherited his business, he didn’t create it. And whatever happened to Trump Airlines? How about Trump University? And then there’s Trump Magazine and Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks and Trump Mortgage. A business genius he is not.” Of course, Trump claims he is a genius because he has never personally declared bankruptcy, but four times Trump-related companies, the Taj Mahal and the Trump Plaza Hotel, both in Atlantic City, the Trump Hotels and Casinos Resort, and Trump Entertainment Resorts, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – allowing him to reorganise debt while the casinos and hotels stayed open. When the Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy in 2014, he was no longer in control of the casino, and reminded people of that in a tweet, saying it was “good timing.” The casino closed down in October, putting 3000 people out of work. How can you trust someone like that, Mr Romney?
Well, Mitt had dinner with Trump and Reince Preibus last night at a three-star Michelin restaurant, Jean-Georges, located in the Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan overlooking Central Park (AFP photo at the top, L to R: Reince Preibus, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney). After a superb meal, Romney told AFP he had been impressed by Trump’s acceptance speech and his preparations for office: “I think you’re going to see American continue to lead the world in this century,” adding he had “increasing hope that president-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us to that better future.” Talk about singing for your supper. Mitt, how can anybody trust you now?
I could go on, but you can see by now why I can’t trust Donald Trump, and why he is likely to be the worst president since Richard Nixon, the only one to resign, before he was impeached, and pardoned a month later by then President Gerald Ford to end “our long national nightmare.” Hunter S. Thompson in his obituary of Richard Nixon tells this story: “Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that ‘I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon’.”
How will American voters feel if Trump resigns, or is impeached, in 2018? According to professional prognosticator, Professor Allan Lichtman, who predicted a Trump victory, is now predicting that the Republican Congress will impeach him and put in Mike Pence as president: “I’m going to make another prediction. This one is not based on a system; it’s just my gut. They don’t want Trump as president, because they can’t control him. He’s unpredictable. They’d love to have Pence — an absolutely down-the-line, conservative, controllable Republican. And I’m quite certain Trump will give someone grounds for impeachment, either by doing something that endangers national security or because it helps his pocketbook.”
We live in hope.

Thanks, Betty. I didn’t want to believe it either, but watching the election results that day (remember we’re 16 hours ahead now) convinced me the anti-Hillary voters were in the ascendancy. He will be a disaster. Hope you and Tom and the Keech clan enjoy the holidays, too. Tom x

I wish people as eminent as Stephen Hawking would stop saying things like “the American public has embraced Donald Trump”. No they didn’t. 26% of the electorate were taken in by his particularly unsubtle line of bullshit and bluster. 74% were not, which in any other country would lead to a resounding defeat at the polls. Damn the electoral college system (although the college has yet to actually vote), and damn the non-voters. And damn the Democratic Party for putting up such a toxic candidate…

Hi Tim, Lots of damns there, but I agree with them all. Very few of my friends who I visited in June embraced Donald Trump. I can’t think of anything worse! I will keep fighting the good fight against the president-elect!

As fall of 2017 approaches, six full months after inauguration, we are still wondering– day by day– just how far out of orbit Donald Trump can go. “The Donald” has proved such a fake president and marginally-functional egocentric, he quickly became a permanent media sideshow– exactly what corporate media knows draws advertisers, and we can expect that sideshow to continue.

Only a hard core of Trump admirers is left, and a growing number of mainstream Republicans simply keep their distance. Eager for any distraction from the Russia probe, Trump already has played “chicken” with North Korea without consulting any sane adults, leaving many American tactical commanders to ponder their own oath to uphold and defend the constitution before upholding and defending Donald Trump.

Have we ever had a crazier individual in the Oval Office? Even Tea Party members show reluctance to endorse many Trump actions and policies. In any other context, a guy like Trump would be dismissed quickly as a blustering, prevaricating incompetent, and demoted accordingly. But the American presidency allows an enormous degree of discretion (or indiscretion) and Trump quickly took refuge in that indulgence.

Yet, the question will not disappear– how long will Trump escape his own foibles? Not surprisingly, many believe Trump is doomed. To them, Trump’s presidential campaign was only a bizarre streak of Trump luck, especially the electoral college. But Trump survival may be more easily explained– critics insist Trump gets by only because people find it easier to let him slip through, time after time.

In the same way, Trump survived the threat of bankruptcy with his casinos, when New Jersey state regulators let him bypass and ignore stringent standards. Their reasoning with Trump creditors? If you bankrupt Trump, and take over his casinos, we cannot let you banks run a casino. We will be forced to shut them down, and hundreds will be without jobs. Your newly-acquired casinos will become a mounting, net loss on your books, and you will beg Trump to return. So which scenario would you prefer?

By analogy, Trump is like a newly-arrived, parasitic vine, clinging to its host tree for dear life. But over the years, the parasite grows over the entire tree, sucking the life out of its host, and ultimately leaving it dead. The process is relentless, unless we who let The Donald begin to strangle our democracy take decisive action.

My Favourite Quotes

“When you publish a book it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.”

Those were the words of Philip Roth who died last week at the age of 85. A great American novelist. My favorite Roth novel is Goodbye Columbus, though his best is probably American Pastoral. Stephen Romei chose the quote above in his blog: A Pair of Ragged Claws. I like this one from The Counterlife from his character Nathan Zuckerman (Roth used it as his opening quote in his 1988 autobiography, The Facts):

“And as he spoke I was thinking, the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives that people turn stories into.”

— The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography

“People were playing dead and they were so scared — a great reason so many were killed was because so many people wouldn’t leave their friends. So many people put themselves in front of people.”
Eagles of Death Metal singer Jesse Hughes tells VICE News about the terror attack on their concert at the Bataclan in Paris. The courage of the concertgoers contrasts with the cowardice of the terrorists.“I now understand in a profound way the agonies borne by so many others in these islands, of whatever faith, denomination or political tradition.”
Prince Charles speaking on a pilgrimage to Mullaghmore, Ireland where 36 years ago his much-loved, great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA. The murder had helped him understand the pain suffered by the people of Northern Ireland during the Troubles.“I was born with a reading list I will never finish.”
Maud Casey, novelist, Associate Professor of English and teacher of creative writing at University of Maryland, quoted at the beginning of a BuzzFeed story on Trove. My sentiments exactly!“And to Luke, my little man, you will not die in vain and will not be forgotten. You are the reason I have found my voice and am able to be here. You are beside me on this journey and with me every step of the way … there remains a serious epidemic across our nation. No matter where you live, family violence exists in every pocket of every neighbourhood.”
Rosie Batty, named 2015 Australian of the Year, dedicating her award to her 11-year-old son Luke, killed last year by his father.“I see Laurie Oakes had a scoop the other day posited on my dying. It will happen sometime, but as you know, I plan for the ages not just for this life.”
Gough Whitlam speaking at his 80th birthday party celebrations, expressing his belief that he had a few more years left.“When someone asked him who would lead the party if he fell under a bus, Gough said that would be unlikely to happen with the improvements my government has initiated in urban transport.”
The Nine Network’s political editor, Laurie Oakes, remembering Gough Whitlam on the Today Show, adding: “I knew Gough well and liked him, and I’ll miss him.”“He was a great parliamentarian, he was a great leader, he was a great Australian, and for so many of us, and this is what makes it so hard, he was a great friend and mentor.”
Senator John Faulkner, speaking to the members of the Labor Caucus, paying tribute to his friend and former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, who has died, aged 98.“No hate in the world is as strong as the love we have for our children, for Mo, for Evvie, for Otis. No hate in the world is as strong as the love we have for Grandad Nick. No hate in the world is as strong as the love we have for each other. This is a revelation that gives us some comfort.”
An excerpt of “a message to the soldiers in the Ukraine, the politicians, the media, our friends and family,” from the Maslins, the Perth parents of the children, along with their grandfather, who were among those killed in the shooting down of Flight MH17.